Forbidden Attraction: Russian Poets Read T. S. Eliot during the Cold War
type: CreativeWork
description: The goal of this study is to demonstrate how the reception of T. S. Eliot, one of the leading proponents of Anglo-American modernism, shaped the aesthetics of Russian poetry in the second half of the twentieth century. In the twentieth century, Russian culture found itself in a unique situation of separation from the Western world, with which it had largely identified in the previous century. The official change of the cultural paradigm that took place in the aftermath of the October Revolution led to the advancement of the literary theory and practices of Socialist Realism, shutting off modernist tendencies and the dialogue with Western modernism. Despite the policy of the Iron Curtain, the Cold War period proved to be different. This study demonstrates that, in the second half of the twentieth century, the Russian poetry of the Soviet underground renewed the dialogue with Western modernism, engaging with it in terms of learning and influence, polemic and debates, recognition and a sense of affinity. This study inscribes theories of poetics into the political context of the Cold War culture. Eliot’s theory formed under the influence of Charles Maurras and T. E. Hulme, critics of the French Revolution, was in epistemological opposition to the values of the Soviet, also post-revolutionary, society and its literary ideals. The period of the Russian poetry that I explore, the late 1950s-the early 1990s, falls into the period of the Cold War broadly understood (1946-1991). Attention to Eliot’s works, occurring in the poetry of the Soviet underground, was a search for alternative poetics, fueled by his hindered availability in the USSR and enormous fame in the West. Gravitating to Eliotic poetic theory, that was built on premises radically different from the Russian literary tradition nourished on humanism, Russian lyric poetry in the second half of the twentieth century absorbed the peculiar features of Western modernism and emerging postmodernism, stepping into the ter…
abstract: The goal of this study is to demonstrate how the reception of T. S. Eliot, one of the leading proponents of Anglo-American modernism, shaped the aesthetics of Russian poetry in the second half of the twentieth century. In the twentieth century, Russian culture found itself in a unique situation of separation from the Western world, with which it had largely identified in the previous century. The official change of the cultural paradigm that took place in the aftermath of the October Revolution led to the advancement of the literary theory and practices of Socialist Realism, shutting off modernist tendencies and the dialogue with Western modernism. Despite the policy of the Iron Curtain, the Cold War period proved to be different. This study demonstrates that, in the second half of the twentieth century, the Russian poetry of the Soviet underground renewed the dialogue with Western modernism, engaging with it in terms of learning and influence, polemic and debates, recognition and a sense of affinity. This study inscribes theories of poetics into the political context of the Cold War culture. Eliot’s theory formed under the influence of Charles Maurras and T. E. Hulme, critics of the French Revolution, was in epistemological opposition to the values of the Soviet, also post-revolutionary, society and its literary ideals. The period of the Russian poetry that I explore, the late 1950s-the early 1990s, falls into the period of the Cold War broadly understood (1946-1991). Attention to Eliot’s works, occurring in the poetry of the Soviet underground, was a search for alternative poetics, fueled by his hindered availability in the USSR and enormous fame in the West. Gravitating to Eliotic poetic theory, that was built on premises radically different from the Russian literary tradition nourished on humanism, Russian lyric poetry in the second half of the twentieth century absorbed the peculiar features of Western modernism and emerging postmodernism, stepping into the ter…
author: Karageorgos, Nataliya
keywords: Comparative Literature, English Language and Literature, Russian Literature, Joseph Brodsky, Arkadii Dragomoshchenko, Olga Sedakova, poetry, impersonality, religion
date published: 2019-05-01T07:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T02:00:26Z
provider: City University of New York - Graduate Center
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: The Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York